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DocumentSets - still stuffed, but...

Microsoft's gradual improvement in Office 365 and SharePoint online is starting to pay off. They are finally getting a handle on useful basic functionality (multi-select bulk-edit of metadata)

or basic document management features from classic (document check-in/out)

even if they miss the mark occasionally ...no bulk-document check-out/in or discard

this one is just laziness not to bring it into modern - because it's been in SharePoint since 2001

But there is one which has naffed us off for ages and Microsoft said 2 years ago that this is coming - and hasn't been seen to do anything since

Yes its... DocumentSets

We've seen documentsets done in a dozen ways from friday, but when you have libraries and lists all in modern (for the better UI and feature experiences) then this:

is not a good experience

Well we're on preview, and they still haven't bother to address this and believe me it's really useful capability and amazingly annoying there is silence about progress *but* we recently saw that you can do this...

i. have default view setup, published only in DocumentSet

ii. which lets you select the documentset (Bongo)

iii. displays all the content with the inherited fields

and the advantage is...

Yep - we see a modern view of the contents - and documents added still inherit the right metadata. Great!

The drawback to this is it doesn't allow for showing the docset global metadata, nor does it allow for tweaking the presentation to be specific and targeted

The advantage is we *mostly* never have to see classic documentset home-page, and we are consistent and supported in modern!

...until a real documentset ui upgrade comes along... hopefully soon.

How is it done? Simple:

  1. in library with documentset, navigate to a documentset

  2. library settings, select create a new view

  3. tick 'set view as a default' (but don't remove the current default)

  4. scroll-down to 'folders' section

  5. select 'show this view' - choose the name of your documentset

  6. Save - and you are done

Let us know if you've got any tips to help avoid the discomfort of crashing back to Classic!

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